"It makes me skeptical about the global warming skeptics “movement”."

Just don't call 'em deniers. ;=)

I deny there are deniers although I'm skeptical of skeptics.

Just wondering, 56 million years ago - where were the humans?

Could it be that when you're with the Flintstones you'll have a yabba dabba doo time, but will also witness the prequel to the collapse of Flintstonian society.

"I deny there are deniers although I'm skeptical of skeptics."

Careful, George, or you'll have the denial police kicking in your door in the middle of the night. Listen for the telltale soft whup whup whup of a stealth helicopter approaching. You won't be able to see them, though, because they're painted black. If you're skeptical of this, don't say I didn't warn you.

56 million years ago, I forget, were there any mammals around then? or if so just a few rodents?

I'm sorry, whenever I read "skeptic" now all I can hear is "denier".

Cameron says:
"Does Dr. Spencer being a creationist make his analysis less convincing ?"

Not really no. I think we can objectively assess the merits of his scientific output without the need to intrude on his personal life.

By the way Cameron, where is your proof that Roy Spencer is a creationist? I hear he goes to his wife's church to keep her happy, but I don't think that proves anything about his private thoughts on what gets preached there.

Instead of casting slurs against people whose scientific discoveries provide evidence contrary to your own assessment of the cause of global warming, you should properly assess their work.

Jerry says:
"I'm sorry, whenever I read "skeptic" now all I can hear is "denier"."

What else do the voices tell you?

Edited by tallbloke on 06/29/2011 02:36:50 MDT.

It seems that bringing up Roy Spencers work has touched a raw nerve. Good, I'll administer more of the medecine. If it isn't hurting, it isn't working. :-)

Edited by tallbloke on 06/29/2011 02:43:21 MDT.

Appologies if I'm a bit behind some of you guys, but here are a few basic facts:

CO2 in the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect, ie. it causes an increase in the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the earth (~1.4W/m2)

Human combustion of fossil fuel and cement production has released >10^12 tons CO2 into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.

Some of this has been absorbed by plants (but deforestation etc is not helping), the rest is still in the atmosphere

The measured CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from ~280ppm to 388ppm over this time period.

To me, the inescapable conclusion is that the small amount of radiative forcing applied to the massive thermal mass of the earths atmosphere and oceans means that the global temperature must rise, but on a much slower timescale than the CO2 changes. It may take a while before this rise can clearly be seen above variations due to weather, solar output etc.



As for "temperature leading CO2 by 6 months", why would anyone be surprised to see some positive feedback on a some timescale or other in a system this complex?

Edited by Scunnered on 06/29/2011 06:14:13 MDT.

Stuart says:
"but here are a few basic facts:
CO2 in the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect, ie. it causes an increase in the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the earth (~1.4W/m2)"

No it doesn't. Co2 is transparent to solar radiation, which primarily heats the ocean not the atmosphere.

"Some of this has been absorbed by plants (but deforestation etc is not helping), the rest is still in the atmosphere"

No it isn't. The cycle time for airbourne co2 is seven to ten years. The natural carbon cycle circulates several tens of times more co2 through the atmosphere than humans put out into it, and a best fit of temperature change on the sea surface, (which rises before co2 level does), to that co2 rise shows that 90% of the increase in airbourne co2 has outgassed naturally from an ocean surface intermittently much warmer during several big El Nino events which took place during the positive phase of the interdecadal Pacific Oscillation from around 1976 to 2003.

See, read and understand this post:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/global-warming-causing-carbon-dioxide-increases-a-simple-model/

I'll await your C13 C12 isotope ratio argument in response to this post from Dr Roy Spencer, the eminently expert climate scientist whose work people ought to pay attention to instead of kneejerking complaints about his wife's family church's pastor's views on how the bible should be interpreted.

Here's Dr Roy's post on that C13 C12 isotope ratio issue.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/increasing-atmospheric-co2-manmade%E2%80%A6or-natural/

Nice graph by the way Stuart. James hanson goes to a lot of trouble to keep revising the GIStemp temperature record to bring it into ever closer agreement with the co2 rise.Doesn't look so convincing when we go back to the start of the co2 data, plus a general extrapolation towards the 'pre industrial level' though. This time with HadCRU data for a change.

.

"As for "temperature leading CO2 by 6 months", why would anyone be surprised to see some positive feedback on a some timescale or other in a system this complex?"

It doesn't just lead it at 'some timescale or other' Stuart. Temperature leads co2 at ALL TIME SCALES. The horse does not push the cart, the tail does not wag the dog.

Edited by tallbloke on 06/29/2011 07:25:23 MDT.

Well put Stuart

But, a lot of CO2 has been absorbed by the ocean which forms carbonic acid.

Acidification is an effect that can't be argued, although it's not clear how well life will adapt to this. Probably some organisms will be supressed and other organisms will thrive.

Rog, voices?, "global warming is real, global warming is real,...", or to be more accurate "global climate change is real, global climate change is real,..."

>> Acidification

Now that could be impairing your perceptions of reality

Don't obey the voices telling you to...
turn on tune in drop out and just follow the herd

Okay Rog, I read your link:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/global-warming-causing-carbon-dioxide-increases-a-simple-model/

A couple things I noticed

Dr. Spencer seems to be a legitimate scientist

He said "I then ran the model in an Excel spreadsheet and adjusted an “a” and “b” coefficients until the model response looked like the observed record of yearly CO2 accumulation rate at Mauna Loa."

adjusting a and b are exactly what you complain about mainstream climate scientists doing, adjusting parameters to come up with the results they want

He said "What could be causing long-term warming of the oceans? My first choice for a mechanism would be a slight decrease in oceanic cloud cover. There is no way to rule this out observationally because our measurements of global cloud cover over the last 50 to 100 years are nowhere near good enough."

In other words maybe increased CO2 levels will cause a major problem, and maybe it won't, we don't know for sure.

I kind of agree with you that climate scientists claim more certainty about global warming than is valid.

Maybe this is just misinterpretation by non-scientists. The basis of science is not faith that a particular theory is correct, but that you always look at data and let it lead you to the most likely conclusion. Over time, the consensus changes.

Bottom line - CO2 is rising because of all the oil and coal we're burning. We don't know what the effect will be but it could be major. We better take the easy steps now to minimize CO2 emissions.

George, great pic, is that Timothy Leary?

Jerry, good on you for taking the time to read. Roy made what is known as a 'best fit' to discover the proportions of natural co2 emission and human contribution to the increase in the airborne fraction of co2. As you can see in the last two graphs, 10% human is about right, 20% is too much. This introduces what is known as a constraint bounding the possibilities.

So that pretty much settles that. The next question is what caused the warming, since we know most of it can't have been caused by co2, since changes in co2 lag behind changes in temperature and it only has a small forcing of itself. The ISCCP satellite data says tropical cloud cover was reduced 1980-1998. This would let more sunshine into the tropical ocean, where it can add most heat to the global ocean.

Then the remaining question is what caused the cloud cover to drop. That's where Svensmark's hypothesis on the reduction in galactic cosmic rays causing reduced cloud condensation nuclei over the ocean comes in. I think that may be only a second order effect, since I discovered a correlation between solar activity levels and upper troposphere specific humidity. Then there is the ozone question. I'm predicting we'll see a strong recovery in ozone now the sun has gone quiet. It is a strong greenhouse gas high in the atmosphere. It should help keep us warm as the oceans lose heat content to the cooler atmosphere.

It's the biggest and best jigsaw puzzle ever. :-)

Edited by tallbloke on 06/29/2011 14:55:30 MDT.

Jerry says:
"Acidification is an effect that can't be argued, although it's not clear how well life will adapt to this. Probably some organisms will be supressed and other organisms will thrive."

A survey of a transect through the Pacific ocean shows that pH level varies much more across 40 degrees of latitude than it will in thousands of years of co2 increase from fossil fuel burning (not that we have that much left). The fishies don't stick to one latitude, so we can safely say tiny changes in average ocean pH are not going to kill marine life or affect it badly. As Roger Caffin pointed out about 15 pages ago, extrapolating hundreds of years of pH trend from 20 years of data using a computer model doesn't tell us anything meaningful.

Don't fall for the next scare hype, use your brain.

"CO2 in the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect, ie. it causes an increase in the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the earth (~1.4W/m2)"

Rog replied:
"No it doesn't. Co2 is transparent to solar radiation, which primarily heats the ocean not the atmosphere."

You're right to correct me here. I should have said something like
"CO2 in the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect, ie. it causes an decrease in the amount of solar radiation re-emitted by the earth (~1.4W/m2)"

Rog said:
"90% of the increase in airbourne co2 has outgassed naturally from an ocean surface intermittently much warmer during several big El Nino events which took place during the positive phase of the interdecadal Pacific Oscillation from around 1976 to 2003"

So why are there no sudden increases in measured atmospheric CO2 corresponding to these events?

Rog said:
"Temperature leads co2 at ALL TIME SCALES"

Again, why no jump in measured CO2 due to the peak in temperature in the 1940s?

I'll take a look as those links when I get time...

Jerry - "We better take the easy steps now to minimize CO2 emissions."

This is just not going to happen no matter who is proven correct - we're going to burn all the oil/gas/coal we can get out of the ground.

Tom says:
"Just don't call 'em deniers." ;=)

There has been an interesting discussion over at the blackboard about the use of the term. Seems it's more offensive to europeans (especially Brits) because of the association with holocaust denial. That association is'n as strong in the states, so maybe you won't understand why I find it so offensive. So I'll ask you nicely:

Please knock it off.

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/more-auto-complete-fun-not-a-river-in-egypt/

Barry Woods says:

"The particular usage of denier, in the climate change debate is perhaps mainly a UK/European thing, but it seems to have travelled somewhat.
The 2 examples I would give were from the Independant – Johann Hari, and George Monbiot – Guardian… in 2005 and 2006 linking Holocaust denial and climate change denial.
They used it reflecting on a very high profile court case about British historian David Irving, that brought the term into common usage in the UK, that makes its use in the UK deliberate and provocative and offensive to ‘climate sceptic’ lukewarmers’ alike in the UK.
As they are both using it at the same time as the trial and conviction of David Irving (2005 -2006), thus a conscious act to link Holocaust Denial in the mainstream media by environmental writers and activists, which was all over the media as current news at the time of their writing it, as the same as climate change denial..
An authoritative source for this opinion below?
The Oxford Online dictionary:
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/denial
“Word Trend
In 1991 the British historian David Irving was convicted in Germany of Holocaust Denial – claiming that the mass murder of the Jews and other groups bythe Naziz in the second World War never happened. In 2006 he was imprisoned on a similar charge in Austria. Holocaust denial is not a crime under UK law, but the 21st century it is often considered taboo to deny the truth of certain concepts. After Holocaust, the commonest modifiers of denier in the Oxford English Corpus reflect some highly contentious issues: climate change, evolution and global warming. Refusal to acknowledge the existance of these things is now seen as so dangerous that some green activists have called for climate change denial to be made illegal”
Pretty definite link I think for the UK, considering Monbiot/Hari MSM articles at the time, ie activists wanting the same law for climate change denial, as for the existing law for holocaust denial. I don’t find anybody calling for laws for evolution denial, or aids denial, etc, do you… The guardian commentors certainly get the connection, even when implicitly not said.

I do accept that this may not have the same useage elsewhere in the world though…
Additionally, the oxford dictionary definition of climate change is also enlightening:
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/climate+change
(as it minimises, excludes natural climate change) – surely newspeak )
ie it’s definition, begs the question, do we need a new word for climate change (natural) prior to the mid 20th century! as ‘climate change’ is taken to mean something else!!"

Edited by tallbloke on 06/29/2011 14:49:10 MDT.

Stuart says:
"You're right to correct me here. I should have said something like
"CO2 in the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect, ie. it causes an decrease in the amount of solar radiation re-emitted by the earth (~1.4W/m2)"

Thanks for acknowledging that. Unfortunately, I'm still going to tsake isue with your reformulation. The Earth absorbs solar shortwave radiation. It emits infrared longwave radiation. The claimed forcing (IPCC says 1.7W/m^2) includes an alleged water vapour feedback which hasn't been observed. Once this assumed feedback is taken away, the forcing on the climate system by co2 is substantially less than that claimed by the IPCC. More like 0.4W/m^2. This relegates co2 warming to the realm of "so what".

"So why are there no sudden increases in measured atmospheric CO2 corresponding to these events?"

There is. Look at the graph I posted yesterday from Ray Tomes. If you overlay the ENSO on that you'll find a good match, at a 6-9 month lag.

"Again, why no jump in measured CO2 due to the peak in temperature in the 1940s?"

Do you have any measured co2 data for the 1940's?

Rog
Do the IPCC acknowledge that they include 'water vapour feedback' in their CO2 value? I could see they have a separate value for 'statospheric water vapour (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1-figure-2.html)

The graph from Ray Tomes has some 14+ increases from 1960 right thru to now, and not restricted to "several big El Nino events which took place during the positive phase of the interdecadal Pacific Oscillation from around 1976 to 2003".

"Do you have any measured co2 data for the 1940's?"

No, but it was you that claimed:
"Doesn't look so convincing when we go back to the start of the co2 data, plus a general extrapolation towards the 'pre industrial level' though."

Rog

"So that pretty much settles that"

I think the only thing settled is that we disagree : )

What do you think about the PETM?

What do you think about the fact that many of the same scientists that are skeptical about Global Climate Change were also "skeptical" that Tobacco is unhealthy?

Hi Stuart,

"Do the IPCC acknowledge that they include 'water vapour feedback' in their CO2 value? I could see they have a separate value for 'statospheric water vapour"

You have to watch the pea very carefully with IPCC graphics. Why is tropospheric water vapour not on that graph? Because it utterly dwarfs co2, but isn't regarded as a forcing, because the IPCC doesn't acknowledge that it varies (with solar activity).

But the alleged water vapour feedback is sneaked in with co2 elsewhere in the report, because they regard it as an automatic consequence of increased co2 even though they have not a shred of evidence to support that assumption. Co2 on it's own would theoretically cause about 1C of warming if it doubles. Yet they claim that with the assumed but not observed water vapour feedback, warming will be 3-4.5C for a doubling of co2. The relationship of the forcing to warming depends on the sensitivity of the climate system. The IPCC makes a wild stab in the dark at this value, which isn't known, because the error margin on the nergy balance at the top of the atmosphere is a whopping three times bigger than the claimed forcing of co2. Uncertainty? You betcha.

"The graph from Ray Tomes has some 14+ increases from 1960 right thru to now, and not restricted to "several big El Nino events which took place during the positive phase of the interdecadal Pacific Oscillation from around 1976 to 2003"."

Sure, the smaller el nino's have an effect too, but not as large. You need to remember that el nino has big effects of sea surface tenperatures elsewhere in the world too which lag behind the el nino events themselves. This overlay should give you a rough idea of what is happening, but bear in mind the changes in SST elsewhere outside the nino 3.4 region this purple curve covers:

.


""Do you have any measured co2 data for the 1940's?"

No, but it was you that claimed:
"Doesn't look so convincing when we go back to the start of the co2 data, plus a general extrapolation towards the 'pre industrial level' though.""

Yes, well, I have my own views on what 1940's co2 readings might look like, but the point is, as well as the subtle short term changes in co2 lagging behind the interannul ENSO events, there is the longer term increase in co2 which is lagging even further behind the general uplift in temperature which has been going on since the end of the little ice age. WHen you get to the timescale of ice ages and interglacials, co2 is lagging 800-2800 years behind the temperature increase.

Jerry says:
"What do you think about the PETM?"

I think it was a long time ago and the world was a very different place.

"What do you think about the fact that many of the same scientists that are skeptical about Global Climate Change were also "skeptical" that Tobacco is unhealthy?"

I think that if you do some real research on this that you'll find that:

a) There aren't 'many of the same scientists' at all.

and

b) The one or maybe two examples you'll find were giving opinions about the degree of danger from second hand smoke being claimed by a couple of lobby groups.

Believe nothing you hear about smears against scientists. Do your own research into source material. In this case that might mean obtaining court transcripts. I don't have time for it. Do you?